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Opinion: Guest Opinions

Mark Gelband: Usurp the new gentry

By Mark Gelband

Posted:
08/18/2016 07:35:35 PM MDT

Updated:
08/18/2016 11:12:08 PM MDT

Imagine the Boulder that Steve Pomerance, Ruth Wright, Al Bartlett and the other founding members of PLAN Boulder County encountered when they first came here — late '50s, and early '60s through the mid-'70s. Boulder was a much more sleepy, western town that happened to have a university here.

CU's first African-American (Negro) football players had only arrived in the '60s, though the tiny houses around Goss-Grove still had remnants of Boulder's earliest African-American neighborhood. No Crossroads (29th Street) or Pearl Street Mall. Most of the land east of Folsom was farm and ranch land. Men still rode horses to Pearl Street for a drink.

New houses being built in post-war Martin Acres cost around $8,000. They largely housed Boulder's middle class and the support staff of CU and their families. Professors lived near the university and walked to work, the Hill had businesses supported by the neighborhood and students. Boulder was indeed a relatively diverse and affordable town, with lingering independent conservatism of the day.

PLAN Boulder's early activism around development, height, slow growth and open space was revolutionary. It disrupted and eventually usurped the status quo of the time. Its political activism and acumen — a concerted effort to control local government through electing council members and seating like-minded people on important city boards — produced nearly 50 years of Boulder city decision-making.

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Mara Abbott's amazing series on PLAN only scratched the surface of this tiny group's sphere of influence. The series was in some ways even more brave than her amazing and inspirational ride at the Olympics.

Indeed, the Blue Line, height ordinance and Open Space program helped shape modern Boulder into the playground and community we love, and the people who led these initiatives should forever be lauded for their foresight, action, and perseverance.

However, what was bold and visionary 40 and 50 years ago became part of a pattern of land-use and zoning decisions that have further gentrified Boulder and enriched once "progressive" people. They have become the conservative, stodgy status quo that needs to be usurped by today's young visionaries of the sharing economy.

Look around: 60,000+ single-occupancy vehicles come to town every day, largely the "servant" class. Most of the "development" of the '70s, '80s and '90s are strip malls with seas of asphalt. Crossroads Mall sat vacant for decades and became, OMG, two of Boulder's most affordable neighborhoods. Whittier and Goss-Grove were downzoned to enrich already wealthy "neighborhood activists" who lived in these neighborhoods.

While the same PLAN Boulder talking heads chirp about affordability, diversity and 15-minute, walkable neighborhoods, they have consistently passed regressive land-use and zoning rules, fees, taxes and other rules that make Boulder less and less diverse and less affordable to those least able to afford it.

Ms. Osborne (married to Alan Boles, long-time PLAN Boulder board secretary) claims that city planning has done an amazing job. She points to our "affordable" (subsidized) housing program as a sign of commitment to affordability and diversity. She also claims that "the growth of high-paying jobs" is at the root of Boulder's current problem, not planning decisions.

That's an interesting claim from someone retired on a pension who was able to buy an "affordable" home on a city salary in one of Boulder's toniest neighborhoods. In fact, Ms. Osborne and her husband bought their home at 525 College in 1991 for $160,000. They immediately "scraped" that house and "popped" a new 4,000-square-foot McMansion that only the two live in.

Mr. Boles was a city attorney at the time. Two middle-class city workers who probably had shared income of at least 90 percent of the purchase price. Two such workers would need a combined salary of nearly $2.2 million today to have the same purchasing power. We don't have many of those "high-paying jobs."

As we talk about Boulder today and 50 years from now — co-ops, granny flats, height, etc., are merely band-aids on a horrible situation created by horrible planning that has enriched people like the Osbornes. Until the "neighborhood-character," "quality-of-life" hypocrites become more self-effacing about their role in these failures and their intractable conservatism, we need other visionaries to boldly usurp this new gentry.

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